ELSEWHERE ON THE GTP NETWORK:

An adorable, extremely rare, earless bunny died on Wednesday after it was stepped on by a careless cameraman at a zoo in eastern Germany. The cameraman was there to film Til, the tiny, earless rabbit, prior to a press conference to introduce the celebrity bunny to the public. Til was allegedly named for German actor Til Schweiger, who was once in a movie called Rabbit Without Ears.

Okay, so this is not some dish about a celebrity drunk and disorderly, but I just could not resist the photo of this painfully cute earless rabbit. How sad that such a lovely creation of nature (even if it was a mutant), should be squished to death by a stupid human.

In an interview with the magazine Der Spiegel, zoo director Uwe Dempwolf said the poor, earless bunny probably didn’t feel a thing. “He was immediately dead, he didn’t suffer,” he said. “It was a direct hit.”

The little, earless bunny had hidden in a pile of hay, the zoo director claims, and the cameraman did not see it. “No one could have foreseen this. Everyone here is upset. The cameraman was distraught.”

Earless rabbits are apparently quite rare and the zoo had planned to drum up some publicity by making the earless bunny into a celebrity animal ambassador. Following the death of little Til, the earless mutant rabbit has been frozen and may eventually end up stuffed.

These preciously adorable earless bunnies are so unusual, a video of one found near the Fukushima nuclear power plant after it was damaged in the T?hoku earthquake and tsunami on 11 March 2011 sparked mild public panic. The earless rabbit video caused some to fear it was a mutant caused by radiation from the damaged plant and that humans might be the next to start suffering mutations from the accident.